For the embattled national chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Abdullahi Adamu, and the national scribe, Senator Iyiola Omisore, it was fait accompli that was doomed to happen.
After several weeks of intrigues in the six-week President Bola Tinubu administration, the night of ‘long knives’ eventually caught up with the duo at the weekend, when, according to sources, they had to comply with the ‘advice to resign’ coming from the top.
The APC chairman was advised to throw in the towel by Hope Uzodinma, governor of Imo State and chairman of the Progressive Governors’ Forum (PGF).
The civilian coup, it was gathered, was to pave the way for the progressive arm of the party to “fully take charge” to complement President Tinubu’s agenda for the country.
Recall that three main elements – Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), championed by Tinubu; Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), spearheaded by former President Muhammadu Buhari and a splinter group of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) known then as nPDP – coalesced to form the APC.
Adamu is going down in history as the shortest-lived elected chairman of APC. He spent 15 months in office. Pa Bisi Akande, interim National Chairman of APC, who was appointed, not elected, spent a year in that capacity.
But Adamu’s tenure was not up to the two-year period of Governor Mai Mala Buni of Borno State, who like Akande was not elected chairman but held forth in interim capacity. Other elected chairman, John Odigie Oyegun and Adams Oshiohmole served out their terms of four years.
Reports gathered yesterday that the plan to oust Adamu began as soon as the national leader of the party won the Presidential election on February 25 because of “anti-progressive tendencies, which Adamu represents in the party” and his inability to understand that there is a new sheriff in town.
A reliable source and one of the founding members of the party said: “You know the party was formed by both progressives and conservative politicians with the purpose to end the PDP years of misrule. And you know that the conservatives have been heading the party apart from the period when the former governor of Edo State, Adams Oshiomhole was the chairman.
